The Losing Bet
by hungrytiger11
Summary: But the Sasuke of today doesn't wear the leaf insignia, Neji reminds them. We will take care of him ourselves, Tenten predicts. Rock Lee doesn't say anything at all. Drabble!fic that is Rock Lee-centric.


Title: The Losing Bet

Author: hungrytiger11

A/N: Originally for the Naruto Gen-meme on Livejournal. First time writing Rock Lee. YOSH!

Summary:But the Sasuke of today doesn't wear the leaf insignia, Neji reminds them. We will take care of him ourselves, Tenten predicts. Rock Lee doesn't say anything at all. Drabble!fic that is Rock Lee-centric

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A bet, that's what it started out as. Self-made bets were win-win situations in Rock Lee's eyes. After all, you either win and make your goal (Yosh!) or get to train (YOSH!). But the bet that sticks in his mind the most is not that time he ran around Konoha on his hands for the first time, or that time he carried Tenten across three countries or that time he tried to carry Neji and couldn't use his right hand for a week after being gentle-fisted out of the idea. No, it was that time he read the entire section of Konoha history in the Konoha Archives. Not a place he usually fulfilled his bets, though Gai-sensei _did_ always point out that genjustsu, or ninjustsu (or even taijutsu) was useless without the shinobi cunning to put such tools to good use. Neji had complained (only days after Lee's hand had recovered) none of Lee's bets were about learning to use his brain more. So, Lee'd bet that if he couldn't beat Neji, he'd read all the history about the Hyuugas. Which turned out to be all the history of Konoha, because then Neji beat him not once but twice, and he'd ended up a week and half buried in dusty tombs, reading about heroes founding great cities, about bloody wars, and then about more recent tragedies that, the more and more he read, added up less and less.

Since then, he's thought of that day more than he should. He'd never had the courage to ask Gai-sensei about any of what he read because no one talked about the Uchiha incident at all and they talked about Sasuke-san even less. But now, when he sees Kakashi,-sensei or Naruto-kun, he sees this person he doesn't understand is in their eyes, is in their hearts. (He does, he will admit if Tenten prods enough about it, see that in Sakura-chan too, but not right away as he does with the others. First he sees her pink hair- so delicate like a flower! And her pounding fists- so full of youthful energy and endurance! And her smile- like a thousand year lotus so rare and yet bringing joy whenever glimpsed! Tenten has said perhaps he just doesn't want to see. As if he could want to see his ladylove anything less than compassionate! Well… a little less compassionate perhaps. Gai-sensei has warned bleeding hearts to not good ninjas make!)

What he read about he cannot picture it at all. Bodies strewn and all of them someone that you loved? Lee has loved his father, and he has loved his team and his teacher and his friends. Their bodies would not even fill one street and he cannot see that. It makes the heart burn hot and cold, and want to grip anyone left tighter to it. Reading about Sasuke-san's family tells nothing about the boy who could have been his friend.

But there are some things Lee can see easier, because they are about to happen. He is listening to people plan them out.

What is it like to fight a traitor? He imagines it is something like fighting Neji. It is like fighting against something better, something stronger, but something so broken you know if you strike it just right you can beat it. Hearing Shikamaru-kun outline his plan, with Ino-chan starting to sniffle in distinctly in un-kouinichi-like ways, it is hard to see if any of the others see that. Neji was beat, once. (well, more than once. That first mission they all took as chuunin nearly wiped them out. A most unyouthful showing. But that is not the point.)

That time in the Forest of Death, Sasuke-san wanted to protect something. He wanted to love something, or already did. Friends are like that and, cool as Sasuke-san seemed then (Cool at thirteen, meaning someone you'd like to fight. Cool at seventeen meaning something more), even he couldn't ignore that. Even curse-riddled and facing giant snakes, Sasuke had wanted to protect his friends. Now, years later, Lee feels if they could find that part of him, they could crack him open. He'd be beaten; he'd be theirs to drag back home. He'd be theirs to bully into training practices and visits to ramen shops and prank wars and being friends again.

But the Sasuke of today doesn't wear the leaf insignia, Neji reminds them. (The Sasuke of today nearly killed then when they chased after almost three years ago.)

We will take care of him ourselves, Tenten predicts.

Rock Lee doesn't say anything at all, but raises his hand when Shikamaru-kun asks who will go. Tenten and Neji raise theirs and how can he let his friends, his team, go without him? This is the fundemental difference between everyone here and Uchiha Sasuake, in the end.

At least he'd get to a chance to fight Sasuke-san again, Lee supposes.

And, if he can't help defeat the last Uchiha, he'd visit Sakura-chan everyday until she was over her sorrow, and if he can't make her happy again he'd- well, he'd do something because how could one stand losing a friend? Lee sighed. No one ever said making bets (or saving lives) was easy. So there were some bets after all that weren't win-win.


End file.
